Thinking Outside the Box

I suppose the age-old rhetorical question of, “Is the glass half empty, or half full?” could be applied to the following commentary. I recently met two men, father and son, who came to Cleveland, looked around, and decided that ours was a city they wanted to make a financial invest in. They immediately put their money where their mouths are by purchasing a huge, long-vacant 120,000 sq. ft. industrial building on the near Westside that they have ambitious plans for. They also purchased a couple of residential properties in need of rehab and have begun working on those already.

Riding around, showing them the Eastside of the city for the following four days, I felt as if I had finally met kindred spirits: They look at buildings and land in a totally different and optimistic manner than anyone I’ve ever met before — particularly anyone I’ve met here in Cleveland. Where others only see weed-choked fields and desolation, they see the potential for business ventures. As we rode past the former Howard Johnson's that currently sits abandoned, overlooking I-90 at E. 55th Street, they asked about it. When I suggested that perhaps that property was too far gone, being empty and neglected for maybe more than 20 years now, they were not deterred in their optimism that something positive could be done with the site. “See how it overlooks the lake,” said the son, “to me that makes it valuable.” They simply cannot believe how underutilized our lakefront is.

When I showed them another site that sits high up on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie, which I thought might be ideal for a commercial venture they were considering, the father asked why would such a site, with its magnificent view of the lake, be used for a commercial venture? Why not build upscale homes there? When I pointed to the railroad tracks that abut the rear of the property, and raised the issue of noise, he smiled at me and said, through his son who was interpreting for him, that he could easily fix the noise problem. Mr. Ng, you see, is an Asian engineer and businessman who doesn’t speak English, and his son, Derek Ng, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He, again though his son, assured me that noise would not be a problem... that he had overcome such obstacles with ease in the past.

One of the problems we Americans suffer is a bad case of unmitigated hubris. We often think that if we can’t do it that must mean it can’t be done. This is why our Corps of Army Engineers turned down the Dutch when they offered technological assistance in reclaiming land around New Orleans and the rest of the Mississippi Delta after Hurricane Katrina. The Dutch have over a thousand years of experience at holding off the sea, and are the acknowledged world leader in levee and retainer wall construction, but our false pride would not let us accept an offer of aid made by a nation with whom we have friendly relations. We’d foolishly rather court further disaster and take chances with innocent lives than admit someone else might know more than us; a behavior and mindset that borders on the criminal.

I met Mr. Ng and his son through Richard Herman, an attorney who is attempting — with somewhat limited success — to bring deep-pocketed investors into Greater Cleveland. When they mentioned “social enterprise” and the desire to assist people returning home from a period of incarceration by creating jobs, my friend Richard immediately thought of me.

The Ng father and son development team was initially looking to put money into the East Coast, from New York to Virginia, but were invited to take a look at Cleveland by Henry Luu, a long-time family friend who has lived in this area since 1982. They liked what they saw, and they know other Asians who would seriously considering investing in the city also. But, as always, there is a catch. Immigration.

In Northeast Ohio immigration is too often viewed as a “zero sum” game ... that, if immigrants come here and win, Americans somehow lose. But this simply is not the case; it can be win-win in Cleveland just as it is in other parts of the country.

An EB5 visa allows foreigners to obtain American citizenship by investing $1 million and creating 10 permanent, full-time jobs over two yeas in this country. If the investment is made in an economically depressed area, $500,000 is the required amount, but still with the 10 jobs. Derek Ng, who thinks outside the box like few other men I’ve ever met, sees many opportunities to start such enterprises here, and to bring over willing and eager investors to fund them.

Large scale fish farming was, for a number of reasons, a business that immediately came to his mind. “You have a great supply of fresh water, and many buildings where the ponds can be housed.” When I expressed that for some reason I’d always thought fish were farmed in ponds outdoors, Derek Ng just smiled. He also smiled when I informed him that the vast empty lots I showed him around the near Eastside (which I have been advocating we farm vegetables on) might contain harmful PCBs, lead or mercury from previous use, and therefore might not be tillable. He consulted with his father before saying, “my father thinks there is a way around that problem, if it should occur. Our feeling is, most problems have a solution, the only thing usually lacking is will.”

While the potential to attract investors here is excellent, we would be in competition with other part so the country where officials have already set up “welcoming centers” to attract them. Money is pouring into some of those areas while we here in Cleveland do this international form of player hating: We’ve been broke so long it just may be that we simply can’t abide foreign investors that have more money than most of us. We’d rather just sit around and wait for General Motors or Ford to open another auto plant on Brookpark Road; but here’s a news flash — it ain’t happening, at least in the next hundred or so years. We’d better come up with something else, like saving the economy 10 or 20 jobs at a time.

My greatest fear is that we’ll infect the Ngs with our own particular brand of defeatism. That we’ll erect so many roadblocks — mostly of the specious and imaginary kind — that they too will give up on Cleveland as an impossible place to do business. Whether we like to admit it or not ... that is sort of our reputation nationwide.

Case-in-point: To jumpstart the process of bringing millions of investment dollars into Cleveland, some government entity needs to spring for the funds to open a welcoming center. Now here’s the sweet part: It’s only an investment, the cost of the center would be repaid over time by fees charged to the investors coming into the country. There’s even a tidy profit to be made.

So, with a small investment we could reap the benefit of millions in investments and hundreds and hundreds of new jobs ... so what’s holding us back? Only ourselves ... and our history of failure over the last half century. But opportunity is banging at the door, there are a few politicians, like Jim Rokakis and Peter Lawson Jones, who have the vision to see the potential; how do we help them create the political will to seize what could be a bright future?

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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